I have to imagine by virtue of the type of people who visit HN - ie the programmers/techies and to a lesser degree the marketing/business types, it would skew significantly male. It might be interesting to slice and dice inside those numbers though to see how those who frequent HN compare with the Kaiser study - Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17772299/Anatomy-of-an-Entrepreneu...
What? You covered every case. I guess 'other' refers to eunuchs and bigender, but why does there need to be a transgender entry? Don't they identify with the sex they switched to?
In MY opinion--mine only, can't speak for anyone else--i think "other" is fine if you don't want to include a big list of stuff. "Other" and "transgender" is probably also fine, but i would have been pretty comfortable with just "other" myself.
You're an interesting case, because you claim to have voted 'other', and so I might learn something from you. What is this list of stuff, I really believe their are the two natural cases[^], with bi-gender, eunuch, and trans-gender being the only other possibilities. What are the other possibilities, if you feel comfortable speaking generally, the thread is practically dead.
For me, the word gender refers to a configuration of organs and only has a secondary meaning for speaking about identity, but the secondary meaning is weak and it is better to speak about sexual identity, a phrase that covers the concept much better and directly.
[^] I was looking for a word that wouldn't be insulting. I hope I succeeded.
Well, first we have to define what exactly we're talking about: physical sex, mental sex, behavioral sex, or some sort of combination. Since it wasn't spelled out i'm just assuming it's "whichever you feel is most important" :)
So for physical sex the "bonus options" (i'm excluding transgender in all cases, since it has its own explicit option) would include, but not be limited to: intersexed (itself an enormous list of totally different and interesting conditions), eunuch (a couple of options here as well), someone who has altered their body in a way that does not fall into eunuch or transgender, or that sort of thing.
Mental sex is a big one, since we don't really understand it and lots of people have slightly different ways of describing themselves. Just a short list: bi-gendered, neither, androgynes (who might say they're different from the bi-gendered--not both, not neither, but somewhere in between), non-conformist male or female (to the point where they would put "other" despite falling more into one category), various cultural versions, and so on.
Behavioral sex almost defies categorization, since it's often explicitly an attempt to defy categorization. You've got crossdressers (who might or might not choose "other" over male or female--or over transgender too, i suppose--and who might be aiming at "passing" or who might be explicitly aiming at perceieved crossdressing), androgynes, various quasi-genders that show up in the queer community ("butch", "femme", etc--though i wouldn't expect these to choose "other", they certainly could if we're talking about behavior and presentation), those who choose to "perform" gender as a political act, etc.
I'm kind of being lazy, but it's a complicated question...
I don't think your answer relates as lazy at all; I appreciate the follow up. If I should accidentally piss someone off in the future, I'll now be able to see how our assumptions differ and we will be able to avoid talking past each other.
Thanks for expanding my perspective in a useful way.
Hmm; this adds an interesting aspect to the poll. As far as I can tell, this user registered in order to answer this poll. In all likelihood, the "others", "transgender", and "females" were probably much more likely to answer this poll and therefore over-representated. (The actual percentage of female users is probably much lower, and the percentage of active female users is probably even lower than that)
Yes, i did indeed register for this poll. I've been lurking here for a while, just never found a thread/poll i really wanted to participate in. Since i'm a bit of a minority i felt that i should represent myself :)
(I don't know about over-representing females, though. It's hard to say without asking a bunch...)
So, if I understand you right then because these polls are 'meaningless' we should assume the likelyhood of HN being populated by 95% females and 5% males as just as high as the reverse ?
Personally - and in contradiction to the link you posted - I'm assuming that people are either not going to report in or are going to tell the truth and that the chances of lying/not reporting in are about the same across genders.
With lying being very very low.
I started this poll because of this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749514 link posted (and dead within seconds) by a user that identified herself as a female by her name in the forum nickname.
It made me wonder how many of the anonymous nicknames belonged to females because for the most part all the names that I can relate to a gender on the forum with the exception of DaniFong belong to males.
It depends on where you hang out. Some places are better than others, and some are even dominated by women. But in general, I agree. After a disturbing experience or two, I decided anonymity was simply easier than hassle. I suspect a lot of folks take this route.
Also, gender anonymity offers an additional freedom: in an age that points out and encourages women engineers and girl gamers, I would like to succeed or fail on my own merits. Anonymity guarantees that I do.
Hence, my current pseudonym, "Dove". It is believably feminine but not particularly so, and is about as non-stealth as I've ever been.
Well, as far as I'm concerned you're very welcome, whatever your gender. My curiosity was mainly in the ratio, not in identifying people, but I'm quite surprised at some of the developments in this thread. (in a positive way).
It shouldn't require you to be stealthy to be taken serious but I fully understand.
In my life at least one female programmer has had a pretty good influence on my development, here's to you Jenny Yip, wherever you are today :)
I'm part of a group of people that are involved with alternative energy, one of the guys there called himself 'fungus'. Everybody assumed him to be a male in is 30's, imagine the surprise when I found out he was a 13 year old whip-smart kid. Holding his own in a community where the average age is probably around 40.
If you're in that situation it's probably quite comparable to what you have to put up with. People will not give you 'full weight' because of who you are, instead of letting your creations stand on their own.
For a long time I thought about how to set up an abuse free forum, and my naive idea to require people to register with their real name went out the window when I realized that this guy, who is one of the best contributors there would not have joined at all.
What are you guessing about me, and on what basis?
The claim about voluntary response polls was especially with reference to your idea of comparing the previous poll's results to the results of today's poll. Both polls might be completely unrepresentative of the population of interest. Assuming that people who come forward voluntarily answer questions truthfully does not assure as that the people who come forward to answer are a representative sample of the whole population.
Can anyone explain to me why this matters? As far as I can tell, the ratio of m/f on HN is of no significance, and furthermore is not really relevant to the type of articles I expect to find on HN.
Satisfying your curiosity is its own reward I guess. It may not 'matter' in any other sense than that. I was just wondering about this and figured the best way to find out is to ask.
So, you would judge for others how they are allowed to feel and you claim to know them better than they can know themselves and all that without even a look at the individual you are addressing ?
I don't think that has anything to do with being politically correct or not, simply with live and let live.
I'm not very current on 'invisible souls', but even those are private property last I checked and the only person who knows them close enough to make the call happens to be the one to express themselves.
To say that you have knowledge that overrules a persons feelings about themselves is a little far reaching.
If somebody would come along and told you how you can or can not feel about yourself and how someone else would be able to perceive something about you that you yourself would disagree with in such a fundamental way (it is your identity we are talking about here) how would that feel ?
I think you're confusing sex and gender. Sex is biological, and you could reasonably claim that it is written in our bodies, as well as our souls, if you see a connection between the two.
Gender, however, is psychological -- it's how you perceive yourself in relation to societal norms. And it can be fluid, like any other psychological process.
Consider someone that told you they were "feeling mad." You can not reasonably refute that statement, as it's purely a statement of internal state and perception. Gender is the same way.
And "psychological" refers to events that occur in your brain, which, if I remember from biology, is a biological organ.
There is at least some, if not a majority of biological cause(as opposed to environmental) behind why some people who are one sex identify with another.
I know anecdote != data, but I have seen an obscure one-woman theater show done by an Australian actor; the theme of the show was "gender" and how little of it has anything to do with your physiology. She comes to stage in drag dressed as a man, but no facial hair; a weird, over aggressive super-macho man. Throughout the performance, she removes one clothing item at a time, and by the time she has stripped there was just a naked, aggressive douche-bag staring back at me. It was one of the profoundest acts of human performance I have ever seen. She is a very attractive women outside character; in-character, it was just another dude at the gym, I now remember that I don't even recall looking at her genitals, I wasn't looking for clues or confirmation, just annoyed there is a naked guy on front of my girlfriend.
It's a pretty good question. Assuming he meant "sex" (based on the original question form). There's XX, XY and some chromosomal abnormalities that are usually called "intersex" AFAIR.
Perhaps the question should have been do you have an SRY gene on a Y chromosome - or (nearly equivalent) "did you have at least one testis at birth". Which would probably be closest to the questioners intent.
Based on my reading of the question, I think its intent is not to ascertain biological sex, but rather gender identity. Asking the question about sex tells you about the person's genitals. Asking the question about gender tells you who that person is, which I believe to be the more useful question.
If a person dresses, acts, and thinks of themselves as a male would, would it be useful to know what chromosomes that person has?
I believe that we're generally speaking advanced enough as a society that men and women are accepted as equals by a majority.
That being given, when someone asks about gender or sex, I'm assuming that they are in fact interested in my biological properties, not my self-identification (which is/should be obvious).
I'm surprised you haven't been downmodded unto oblivion - your idea is quite unpopular these days. Perhaps even "What You Can't Say" unpopular territory:
A Harvard President lost his job over remarks similar to what you just made. And yet, we could observe that in aggregate, men and women have different hormone balances, biochemistry, reproductive systems, feel different degrees of different emotions, account for very different sorts and frequencies of crime, purchase very different products and services, and so on and so forth.
So yes, while you are factually correct in many ways, I am surprised you are still standing. The idea is not a pleasant one to most people. Perhaps because it can too easily be carried too far, or misapplied, or that the generalization will be mis-applied to a particular individual who will be offended, and certainly our society puts a very high premium on not offending anyone. Or maybe I am off in my thinking, but truth aside, I remain surprised that you have not piled on for making such a comment.
I think you greatly exaggerate the taboo here. I've spoken with men and women about issues of gender inequality. Men and women are not identical, there are situations when they should not be treated the same. I think it's a shame people incorrectly treat them the same because of fear of being labelled sexist where there are generally differences in behavioural preferences between men and women, most obviously when you observe body language.
There are very reliable statistics that show pay discrepancies in the favour of men. For discussion of that to be taboo would be very bad.
For some reason, I find the question "did you have at least one testis at birth" incredibly funny. I can imagine an almost Monty Pythonian moment where I would find that question on a government form of some sort.
There are a variety of conditions that usually fall into "intersex", from XY females (who usually identify as female and would typically pick the female option as that's how they typically (again: typically, they're perfectly justified in choosing "other" or "transgender" and arguably justified in choosing "male") prefer to describe themselves) to chimeras (who can be damn near anything) or the like. "Other" could also be someone who has modified their sex, but is not "transgender" or at least not comfortable self-describing that way (androgynes, certain lesbians, etc) or someone who does not fit into the binary gender scheme in general. (If we're talking gender.)
I'm not a native English speaker, and chances are that I'm simply translating from the dutch word, where 'geslacht' = 'gender' and 'sex' has (usually) only one meaning.
I didn't mean to single anyone out; it's pervasive. However, another thread off this topic suggests that 'sex' refers to specific biological features (e.g. genitals) while 'gender' is used to indicate one's psychological state (e.g., self-identifies as male, female, something else altogether).
I have to imagine by virtue of the type of people who visit HN - ie the programmers/techies and to a lesser degree the marketing/business types, it would skew significantly male. It might be interesting to slice and dice inside those numbers though to see how those who frequent HN compare with the Kaiser study - Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17772299/Anatomy-of-an-Entrepreneu...
HN does have some members who do not fit in either category. :)
suggestion for an amendment of the poll ?
You could probably get away with just "Transgender" and "Other," but there's a pretty huge spectrum out there.
poll amended.
Thanks for being inclusive!
You're welcome, apologies for not thinking of it right away.
there's a pretty huge spectrum out there
What? You covered every case. I guess 'other' refers to eunuchs and bigender, but why does there need to be a transgender entry? Don't they identify with the sex they switched to?
There are some people with more complex gender identities. I don't pretend to fully understand, but "neither fully describes me" is an example.
In MY opinion--mine only, can't speak for anyone else--i think "other" is fine if you don't want to include a big list of stuff. "Other" and "transgender" is probably also fine, but i would have been pretty comfortable with just "other" myself.
You're an interesting case, because you claim to have voted 'other', and so I might learn something from you. What is this list of stuff, I really believe their are the two natural cases[^], with bi-gender, eunuch, and trans-gender being the only other possibilities. What are the other possibilities, if you feel comfortable speaking generally, the thread is practically dead.
For me, the word gender refers to a configuration of organs and only has a secondary meaning for speaking about identity, but the secondary meaning is weak and it is better to speak about sexual identity, a phrase that covers the concept much better and directly.
[^] I was looking for a word that wouldn't be insulting. I hope I succeeded.
Well, first we have to define what exactly we're talking about: physical sex, mental sex, behavioral sex, or some sort of combination. Since it wasn't spelled out i'm just assuming it's "whichever you feel is most important" :)
So for physical sex the "bonus options" (i'm excluding transgender in all cases, since it has its own explicit option) would include, but not be limited to: intersexed (itself an enormous list of totally different and interesting conditions), eunuch (a couple of options here as well), someone who has altered their body in a way that does not fall into eunuch or transgender, or that sort of thing.
Mental sex is a big one, since we don't really understand it and lots of people have slightly different ways of describing themselves. Just a short list: bi-gendered, neither, androgynes (who might say they're different from the bi-gendered--not both, not neither, but somewhere in between), non-conformist male or female (to the point where they would put "other" despite falling more into one category), various cultural versions, and so on.
Behavioral sex almost defies categorization, since it's often explicitly an attempt to defy categorization. You've got crossdressers (who might or might not choose "other" over male or female--or over transgender too, i suppose--and who might be aiming at "passing" or who might be explicitly aiming at perceieved crossdressing), androgynes, various quasi-genders that show up in the queer community ("butch", "femme", etc--though i wouldn't expect these to choose "other", they certainly could if we're talking about behavior and presentation), those who choose to "perform" gender as a political act, etc.
I'm kind of being lazy, but it's a complicated question...
I don't think your answer relates as lazy at all; I appreciate the follow up. If I should accidentally piss someone off in the future, I'll now be able to see how our assumptions differ and we will be able to avoid talking past each other.
Thanks for expanding my perspective in a useful way.
Yes! "Other" please :)
(Edit: and just as i post, the poll is edited. Now all us weird people can vote, too! Yay!)
Hmm; this adds an interesting aspect to the poll. As far as I can tell, this user registered in order to answer this poll. In all likelihood, the "others", "transgender", and "females" were probably much more likely to answer this poll and therefore over-representated. (The actual percentage of female users is probably much lower, and the percentage of active female users is probably even lower than that)
Yes, i did indeed register for this poll. I've been lurking here for a while, just never found a thread/poll i really wanted to participate in. Since i'm a bit of a minority i felt that i should represent myself :)
(I don't know about over-representing females, though. It's hard to say without asking a bunch...)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309
hm, didn't realize it was going to be a duplicate, but it is interesting because that means we can compare the change over time.
Over time? That was 3 months ago.
I think I've posted the full FAQ on voluntary response polls enough times that this time I'll just provide a link.
http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...
So, if I understand you right then because these polls are 'meaningless' we should assume the likelyhood of HN being populated by 95% females and 5% males as just as high as the reverse ?
Personally - and in contradiction to the link you posted - I'm assuming that people are either not going to report in or are going to tell the truth and that the chances of lying/not reporting in are about the same across genders.
With lying being very very low.
I started this poll because of this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749514 link posted (and dead within seconds) by a user that identified herself as a female by her name in the forum nickname.
It made me wonder how many of the anonymous nicknames belonged to females because for the most part all the names that I can relate to a gender on the forum with the exception of DaniFong belong to males.
When you're a girl on the internet, you don't use an obviously girly name unless you want a certain kind of attention. Nuff said.
It's that bad ? Wow. Colour me naive, but that's really sad.
It depends on where you hang out. Some places are better than others, and some are even dominated by women. But in general, I agree. After a disturbing experience or two, I decided anonymity was simply easier than hassle. I suspect a lot of folks take this route.
Also, gender anonymity offers an additional freedom: in an age that points out and encourages women engineers and girl gamers, I would like to succeed or fail on my own merits. Anonymity guarantees that I do.
Hence, my current pseudonym, "Dove". It is believably feminine but not particularly so, and is about as non-stealth as I've ever been.
Well, as far as I'm concerned you're very welcome, whatever your gender. My curiosity was mainly in the ratio, not in identifying people, but I'm quite surprised at some of the developments in this thread. (in a positive way).
It shouldn't require you to be stealthy to be taken serious but I fully understand.
In my life at least one female programmer has had a pretty good influence on my development, here's to you Jenny Yip, wherever you are today :)
I'm part of a group of people that are involved with alternative energy, one of the guys there called himself 'fungus'. Everybody assumed him to be a male in is 30's, imagine the surprise when I found out he was a 13 year old whip-smart kid. Holding his own in a community where the average age is probably around 40.
If you're in that situation it's probably quite comparable to what you have to put up with. People will not give you 'full weight' because of who you are, instead of letting your creations stand on their own.
For a long time I thought about how to set up an abuse free forum, and my naive idea to require people to register with their real name went out the window when I realized that this guy, who is one of the best contributors there would not have joined at all.
One day...
When you're a girl on the internet, you probably don't identify with/find interesting most common girly names.
What are you guessing about me, and on what basis?
The claim about voluntary response polls was especially with reference to your idea of comparing the previous poll's results to the results of today's poll. Both polls might be completely unrepresentative of the population of interest. Assuming that people who come forward voluntarily answer questions truthfully does not assure as that the people who come forward to answer are a representative sample of the whole population.
http://aurora.wells.edu/~srs/Math151-Fall02/Litdigest.htm
http://www.edcallahan.com/web110/lectures/litdigest.htm
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/
Well, so far the ratio seems to be just as skewed as it was then.
HN is a sausage fest? Who woulda thunk it?
I usually use "they"...
This goes to show that while males waste their time on news sites females actually hack stuff.
Heh!
When I get more karma, I am so down voting this.
Can anyone explain to me why this matters? As far as I can tell, the ratio of m/f on HN is of no significance, and furthermore is not really relevant to the type of articles I expect to find on HN.
Satisfying your curiosity is its own reward I guess. It may not 'matter' in any other sense than that. I was just wondering about this and figured the best way to find out is to ask.
There is no greater significance to it than that.
Next up, do you like "crunchy" or "smooth" (soon after to be altered to include the options "neither", "both" and "wtf"?).
Awwe, a "wtf" option would ruin the whole thing :P
(Smooth, by the way ^_^)
There are probably U.S. Federal Prisons with more balanced ratios than HN or your average engineering program.
Crimes has a universal appeal.
Disclaimer: This is a downmod posting. Please obey current Political Correctness Dictatorship, and down-vote, thanks!
Simply a side note:
We all have written our gender not only in our body, but even in our (invisible) souls.
Now, to all of you thinking that one is able to actually change ones gender: no, sorry, that's not possible.
Your soul will remain the same, and anybody really knowing you, will not note any difference...
Wow.
So, you would judge for others how they are allowed to feel and you claim to know them better than they can know themselves and all that without even a look at the individual you are addressing ?
I don't think that has anything to do with being politically correct or not, simply with live and let live.
I'm not very current on 'invisible souls', but even those are private property last I checked and the only person who knows them close enough to make the call happens to be the one to express themselves.
To say that you have knowledge that overrules a persons feelings about themselves is a little far reaching.
If somebody would come along and told you how you can or can not feel about yourself and how someone else would be able to perceive something about you that you yourself would disagree with in such a fundamental way (it is your identity we are talking about here) how would that feel ?
I think you're confusing sex and gender. Sex is biological, and you could reasonably claim that it is written in our bodies, as well as our souls, if you see a connection between the two.
Gender, however, is psychological -- it's how you perceive yourself in relation to societal norms. And it can be fluid, like any other psychological process.
Consider someone that told you they were "feeling mad." You can not reasonably refute that statement, as it's purely a statement of internal state and perception. Gender is the same way.
And "psychological" refers to events that occur in your brain, which, if I remember from biology, is a biological organ.
There is at least some, if not a majority of biological cause(as opposed to environmental) behind why some people who are one sex identify with another.
I agree, but the thing is: some people's soul gender is different from their born body gender.
You have no idea.
I know anecdote != data, but I have seen an obscure one-woman theater show done by an Australian actor; the theme of the show was "gender" and how little of it has anything to do with your physiology. She comes to stage in drag dressed as a man, but no facial hair; a weird, over aggressive super-macho man. Throughout the performance, she removes one clothing item at a time, and by the time she has stripped there was just a naked, aggressive douche-bag staring back at me. It was one of the profoundest acts of human performance I have ever seen. She is a very attractive women outside character; in-character, it was just another dude at the gym, I now remember that I don't even recall looking at her genitals, I wasn't looking for clues or confirmation, just annoyed there is a naked guy on front of my girlfriend.
What if my soul was androgynous from the start, and it's my body/"gender" that i'm bringing into line with my soul rather than the other way around?
I mean, that's the other option, isn't it?
What is the "Other" gender?
It's a pretty good question. Assuming he meant "sex" (based on the original question form). There's XX, XY and some chromosomal abnormalities that are usually called "intersex" AFAIR.
Perhaps the question should have been do you have an SRY gene on a Y chromosome - or (nearly equivalent) "did you have at least one testis at birth". Which would probably be closest to the questioners intent.
Based on my reading of the question, I think its intent is not to ascertain biological sex, but rather gender identity. Asking the question about sex tells you about the person's genitals. Asking the question about gender tells you who that person is, which I believe to be the more useful question.
If a person dresses, acts, and thinks of themselves as a male would, would it be useful to know what chromosomes that person has?
I believe that we're generally speaking advanced enough as a society that men and women are accepted as equals by a majority.
That being given, when someone asks about gender or sex, I'm assuming that they are in fact interested in my biological properties, not my self-identification (which is/should be obvious).
Obvious face-to-face, maybe.
Men and women are not equal and never will be.
I'm surprised you haven't been downmodded unto oblivion - your idea is quite unpopular these days. Perhaps even "What You Can't Say" unpopular territory:
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
A Harvard President lost his job over remarks similar to what you just made. And yet, we could observe that in aggregate, men and women have different hormone balances, biochemistry, reproductive systems, feel different degrees of different emotions, account for very different sorts and frequencies of crime, purchase very different products and services, and so on and so forth.
So yes, while you are factually correct in many ways, I am surprised you are still standing. The idea is not a pleasant one to most people. Perhaps because it can too easily be carried too far, or misapplied, or that the generalization will be mis-applied to a particular individual who will be offended, and certainly our society puts a very high premium on not offending anyone. Or maybe I am off in my thinking, but truth aside, I remain surprised that you have not piled on for making such a comment.
I think you greatly exaggerate the taboo here. I've spoken with men and women about issues of gender inequality. Men and women are not identical, there are situations when they should not be treated the same. I think it's a shame people incorrectly treat them the same because of fear of being labelled sexist where there are generally differences in behavioural preferences between men and women, most obviously when you observe body language.
There are very reliable statistics that show pay discrepancies in the favour of men. For discussion of that to be taboo would be very bad.
"(which is/should be obvious)"
Not always as obvious as you might think! It's the exceptions that are important, here.
Shouldn't your biology actually be more obvious than your gender? I mean, being somewhat of a devil's advocate here.
For some reason, I find the question "did you have at least one testis at birth" incredibly funny. I can imagine an almost Monty Pythonian moment where I would find that question on a government form of some sort.
It's a last resort sort of question for when you're desperate. Monty Pythonian, sure, but that sort of question has really hurt people, unfortunately.
There are a variety of conditions that usually fall into "intersex", from XY females (who usually identify as female and would typically pick the female option as that's how they typically (again: typically, they're perfectly justified in choosing "other" or "transgender" and arguably justified in choosing "male") prefer to describe themselves) to chimeras (who can be damn near anything) or the like. "Other" could also be someone who has modified their sex, but is not "transgender" or at least not comfortable self-describing that way (androgynes, certain lesbians, etc) or someone who does not fit into the binary gender scheme in general. (If we're talking gender.)
"Transgender" is pretty straightforward.
It's for robots.
Come on, this is HN, you don't think humans are they only ones here do you?
Hats off to the 20 women on HN. You're the exception to many dumb societal rules.
Side question: when did people stop referring to 'sex', and start referring to 'gender'?
I'm not a native English speaker, and chances are that I'm simply translating from the dutch word, where 'geslacht' = 'gender' and 'sex' has (usually) only one meaning.
I didn't mean to single anyone out; it's pervasive. However, another thread off this topic suggests that 'sex' refers to specific biological features (e.g. genitals) while 'gender' is used to indicate one's psychological state (e.g., self-identifies as male, female, something else altogether).
I was disappointed not to see a robot option.
If HN even had a 5% female ratio I'd be surprised.